Saturday, May 19, 2012

Opinion: Idaho Incapable of Managing Wolves

by michael robinson high country news on May 18, 2012

Idaho’s treatment of wolves has not yet sunk to the bygone days
of state bounties and federal poisoning that exterminated all the
wolves in the Lower 48 states, except for a few in northern Minnesota.
But it’s not far off the mark.

With at least 378 of the state’s approximately 1,000 wolves already
trapped and hunted this year, Idaho is well on the way to driving its
wolves back to the brink. In the process, the state is building a
compelling case for returning federal protection to wolves.

It was just a year ago this month that a congressional rider on a
budget bill stripped Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in
Idaho, Montana and parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington.
The move put the states in charge of wolves, in large part because,
supporters argued, the states could better manage their own wolf
populations. But all the evidence to date suggests that Idaho’s
management ignores the scientific, on-the-ground realities of conserving
wolves. It has failed to figure out how to manage the complex human
factors involved when wolves and people share the same landscape.

The inhumane wolf free-for-all in Idaho was thrust under a national spotlight this spring by a graphic photo showing a trapped male wolf in northern Idaho.
The wolf was still very much alive, and in pain, in a circle of bloody
snow with a grinning trapper in the foreground. The picture was posted
on a trapping website in March and ignited a firestorm of revulsion when
it went “viral” online.
Idaho state law makes it a crime for a person who “causes or procures
any animal to be cruelly treated, or who, having the charge or custody
of any animal either as owner or otherwise, subjects any animal to
cruelty.” The law also requires that “destruction of animals for
population control” (the supposed reason for wolf trapping) be carried
out humanely.

But the bleeding, suffering black wolf, which had possibly already
been shot as well, had to wait for the photo to be taken before it was
killed.

A reasonable person, or at least an empathetic one, might conclude
that the trapper who prolonged the animal’s suffering in order to pose
for a photo violated the minimal standard of decency intended by state
law. Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials say no law was broken
since the trapper had a valid wolf-trapping permit, but they
acknowledged that the trapper’s actions were “contrary to the ethics and
humane responsibility” taught in trapping classes.

The state’s cursory investigation of this cruel incident only serves
to highlight its reluctance to address head-on the anti-wolf fervor that
is the primary impediment to the wolf’s survival and recovery. It also
clearly shows why the removal of federal Endangered Species Act
protections was premature. Even at the high-water mark of their recovery
in 2009, wolves were established in less than 5 percent of their
historic range in the contiguous 48 states, and only 115 breeding pairs
survived in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

What was always clear was that, without federal protections, the
states would move quickly to reduce their wolf populations. For these
and other reasons, federal courts consistently ruled that taking wolves
off the endangered species list in the Northern Rocky Mountains violated
the Endangered Species Act.

But after the last of these rulings, Congress on April 14, 2011,
approved a rider on a must-pass budget bill that required wolf delisting
in the Northern Rockies. The passage of such legislation was
unprecedented, and it is now unraveling more than 15 years of work to
recover wolves and conserve their ecosystems.

The return of wolves to the Northern Rockies has taught elk to avoid
valley bottoms where they can’t see wolves approaching. Streamside trees
are now thriving in places where elk had eaten every growing sapling
during the previous seven decades. Songbirds now nest in new
cottonwoods, beavers gnaw down some of them for dams, and fish thrive in
the beaver ponds. Wolves also provide carrion from the leftovers of
their kills, benefiting scavenging bears, eagles, weasels, and
wolverines. And wolves even help foxes by controlling the number of
coyotes, which kill the smaller foxes.
In short, wolves were returning to their rightful place as an
important, influential force on the landscape. Now, Idaho seems
determined to go back to the days when wolf extermination – rather than
conservation – was the name of the game. Idaho was given a chance to
responsibly manage wolves, but the state has clearly shown that it is
not up to the task.

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

.

.

Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

.

“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone